Fable II

Honest review by: QUIK

Much better then the original. In Fable II you re-enter the world of Albion as a young child destined for great things. Whether you become a feared tyrant or a beloved hero of the people is up to you from the moment you pick up your gamepad. It effects your appearance, how people react towards you and even how much discount you will get from a merchant. The thing is the choices in this game or not often black or white but a very strange shade of gray. I have often found myself making a decision which I felt was morally fitting my character (I was role-playing a good character) only to see evil points increasing. That is the fun aspect of the game, if you don’t cheat by looking up quest results online, you will find yourself really thinking over some of the moral choices you will have to make in this game.

The gameplay is solid on the Xbox 360. I would say that casting spells system could use some improvement, I did not find it too intuitive and as a result my character was a strong, dexterous (read: beefy) woman that did not have much talent in casting spells. I LOVE … let me say it again, I LOVE the fact that the game tells me which is the best weapon in my inventory for melee or ranged combat. Even as you pick up weapons the game will inform you if you’ve picked up a better weapon so you can start using it immediately. No need to take out a calculator to calculate the difference between a weapon with higher damage but lower speed versus a lower damage but much faster to use weapon. The game will tell you which is the best weapon over all in your inventory, period.

Fable II has a high re-playability advantage. It’s been a while since I’ve played a game twice but after playing a very good character I am really tempted to create an evil bastard who will hold Albion in an iron-lock grip. There are 66 achievements you can get. Demon doors are always fun side-quests in Fable (although I enjoyed the demon doors in Fable II a lot more then the original). I especially recommend doing the winter one right past Wraithmarsh. Without too many spoilers, I found a weapon there that I used until the very end of the game. It was that cool. Finding Gargoyle heads which you shoot down (50 altogether) is another fairly fun side quest. There are a lot of mini-games in Fable II and pretty much all of them I’ve enjoyed a lot. Whether you get simple jobs, become a bounty hunter or do civic duty all those seemed fun and not just something I did to get another achievement. I recommend picking up Fable II. Especially if you’ve played the original Fable and thought to yourself “This could have been so much better”. Well, now it is. The music, voice acting (I chose the UK voice acting), world design, everything is very beautiful, very ambient and enjoyable. Now before you begin your adventure in Albion you just got to ask yourself one thing: “Who am I?” and then become that person.